


Jahli

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Flashbacks, back story, mildly implied crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: This one is for tumblr user doctornerdington, who wanted a fill for “Phasma and Holdo knew each other many years ago…”  I don’t think this is what you were after but I think you’ll like it anyway.  :)





	Jahli

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doctornerdington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/gifts).



They’d been small children together, in that place in Phasma’s memory that had no name, that place that was just great, tall trees with enormous leaves that dripped golden dew in the summer.  

_Who is she?_

They had very little language at that age, whatever age it was, but they played together at the edge of a stream a stone’s throw from the house, at the border of the kunaga hunting grounds.  She remembers their small toes in the mud, a shared moment of wonder as a pair of furry, silvery kunagas with their great, long necks came prancing from the forests and lowered their tapered muzzles into the water to drink.

_It’s her._

The girl had purple curls that tumbled down her back and somehow even when she walked in the mud barefoot, her robes always stayed neat and never got wet or dirty.  Phasma had been big for age and towered a whole two inches over the strange little girl with purple curls.  Phasma’s father had always prized her being so big and strong, but she remembered feeling a little ungainly when she played with the purple-haired girl.  The first time she looked up from where she played in the dirt, and saw her, she was lit from behind, and looked like a wood spirit with her clear, bright eyes and the sun playing on her funny-colored curls.  And when the storm troopers had come, and taken everyone, Phasma worried about the little girl ( _What was her damned name?)_ , but only a little.  She was capable and wily, that little girl.

She’d never seen her again, and soon enough stopped thinking of her.  Till now.

This isn’t the first time Phasma has ever been on the business end of a Resistance blaster.  But she can’t help wondering if it will be her last.  She lays awkwardly sprawled on the stones of this back alley in Mos Dendin, having been thrown off of a rooftop by pulse cannon fire.  For all her skill, she is still fairly new to live combat in a real theater and she is about to lose her life for a real rookie mistake: trying to survey the situation from the line of fire.

She’d tumbled down the back of the flaming rooftop, clattered down the awning of a shop on her way down, feeling every jostle and bang and poke and thud.  She’s sure she tastes blood and probably one of her knees is broken.  And the Resistance soldier in front of her is pointing a blaster at her head.  

The soldier is wearing Resistance light battle armor strapped over brown leather trousers and boots, and Phasma recognizes in her cool, intelligent gaze a fellow warrior.  She recognizes the woman’s steadiness.  She also can’t take her eyes off of the woman’s hair.  Her strange, curly, purple hair poking out from under her helmet.

“Hands up!” the woman orders.  Phasma hesitates and then slowly raises her hands.  She brings them to her helmet and pulls it off.  She has to know.  The sound of blaster fire rages on the other side of the block, but Phasma looks up at her, searching her face.

_Who is she?_

The Resistance soldier pauses, tilts her head, gazing at her with an appraising eye.  Is it recognition Phasma sees?

The Resistance soldier utters a name, then.  A name Phasma had forgotten.  “Jahli?”

That was what Phasma been called when she was carried on her father’s shoulders, when she played with the small, furry beast that slept by their fire.  Before she had been conscripted, turned into Phasma.  

She runs a gloved hand over her sweaty forehead and matted blond hair, staring up at the soldier.  She looks so different than when they’d been small, but it is her.  Backlit now by explosions and fire, instead of sunlight, but still slender and tall, luminous as a wood spirit.  Phasma nods dumbly.

“So they got you.”  She seems disappointed.

Phasma nods.  “And they didn’t get you.”

The soldier nods.  

Another moment passes between them, Phasma waiting for the soldier to blast her, the soldier absorbing the identity of her old friend, and weighing what to do with the information.  

“Rebel scum,” Phasma says without much conviction, daring her to shoot but not really meaning it.

“Pretty much.”  Something collapses into fire on the far end of the alley.  The soldier glances over her shoulder.  She turns, graceful and quite fearsome for how slender she is, and over her shoulder she says, “Take care of that leg, Jahli, it looks a little messed up.”

“You’re not going to kill me?” Phasma calls after her, confused.

The soldier stops, turns and looks at her one last time.  “I won’t be so generous next time.  I hope you find a new line of work, Jahli.”  And she jogs away, back toward the conflict and the fire and the crashing and explosions.  And Phasma remembers.

_Amilyn.  The little girl’s name was Amilyn._


End file.
